Sunday, September 11, 2011

Ritual – Songs for a Dead King (unreleased – 1981 / 1983)

It’s been almost a year since we last discussed Ritual in an
article that led to my discovery of the unreleased Songs for a Dead King. In
bizarre mea culpa – it’s sat on my hard drive unheard until yesterday,
and the loss is totally mine, because it’s very good indeed.

That Ritual never formally released this is almost a crime –
it’s vastly better than the stuff they released through Red Flame.

As one might expect from their vinyl releases, it straddles
the line between punk and what would become known as “Goth”. What one might not
expect is the odd, and indeed cute, media samples in between songs.

Curiously, Ritual seem to have unleashed Songs for a Dead
King on an unsuspecting world twice. The first time was in 1981, which they
then followed up with the “Mind Disease”
7” (Red Flame, 1982) and the “Kangaroo
Court” 12” (Red Flame, 1983) before Songs for A Dead King makes a
reappearance in 1983. It’s not clear to me if the two versions are the same
album in different packaging, or if Ritual actually recorded the entire thing
over again.

The cassette cover of the 1983 version

A different version of “Mind
Disease” appears here, and is much more engaging than the 7” version, and
so does a much improved version of “Brides”
from the Kangaroo Court 12”.

More importantly there are some brilliant tracks like “Portrait”, “End Product” and “Assassin”
that don’t appear anywhere else, and a wonderfully aggression-fueled
interpretation of The Velvet Underground’s “Waiting
for the Man”.

And happily, some helpful little soul has put the entire
thing on Youtube for us.

Structure (of my Madness)

Human Sacrifice

Playtime

Manpower

Portrait

Cult

Brides

Closedown

Effigy

Waiting for the Man

End Product

Mind Disease

Assassin

As noted, Songs for a Dead King was never formally released
on any label. Discogs.com suggests that “While
shopping their demo around the band compiled a cassette tape of live tracks and
demo recordings to sell to fans.”

This raises more questions – was this album put together as a
“proof of concept” thing for a
forthcoming album, or was it perhaps produced for fans only? Seemingly it
resides in a strange grey area of being more than a demo yet less than an
album.

In the end though, it doesn’t really matter, because it’s
quite brilliant, deserves to be more widely disseminated, and it’s here:

A Welcome and Introduction

Plunder the Tombs was started back in 2010 by way of looking back on a musical past that I felt in sore need of curation.

It was a strange and sad time when what passed for “Goth” in clubs seemed a pale imitator of what once was, following first a decade of cookie-cutter Sisters of the Nephilim clone bands and then another decade of industrial dance being palmed off to younger audiences as a type of faux goth. When on rare occasion DJs in “Goth” clubs did finally become brave enough to play something like Bauhaus it was not untypical to have the dance floor clear, and it became obvious that the memory, meaning and legacy of much that had gone before had been lost.

It’s probably safe to say that the boundaries of what was “Goth” were never clearly defined. An absolute blessing for those bands on the original scene before it had a name pinned to the donkey, but an outright curse for those who came later and found rules had been imposed to dictate that which was and that which was not acceptable. Worse still was to come in the 90s from a lazy and unquestioning media who simply assumed that anything that wore black and make up was by definition “Goth”, thus allowing all manner of pretenders licence, and maximising confusion as to what the term actually referred to.

This has gone on for way too long and its time is at an end. Neo Post-Punk bands now proliferate across Europe, old long dead Goth bands rise from their crypts in the UK, and new deathrock bands are breeding like rabbits up the west coast of America. It is time to reclaim our scene back from metal bands and ravers in disguise.

While the Plunder the Tombs of old focused on what had gone before, there are now far too many exciting new things to ignore. We roar back to life in a reboot, covering past , present and things yet to come.

Let us plunder the tombs….

About Me

A DJ throughout the 90s at numerous Goth night clubs in Perth including The Cell, Dominion and others he was probably far too drunk to remember, largely as a result of his preference to work for bar tabs over cash. Also helped found 6RTR fm's Goth & Industrial showcase Darkwings.
More recent projects include the currently dormant Descent - a small night dedicated to playing genuinely good Goth music both old and new in preference to packing the dance floor with songs everyone had heard 20 million times before. He currently runs a monthly show on Behind the Mirror on 6RTR fm which can be heard on Wednesdays at 11pm WST.
Rumour has it he once masterminded an ill-advised Goth fanzine "Small Pleasures" that in retrospect, he remains profoundly grateful never made it off his desk.